Teddy Ogallo
Kenyan fintech innovator Teddy Ogallo founded WayaWaya in 2015 to make banking as easy as sending a chat. His Janja bots link banks, mobile-money wallets and card networks to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram, letting users move money, pay bills, take micro-loans and get instant support. By 2020 the platform moved more than 100 million shillings monthly and powered social-commerce rails for MTN Uganda, Interswitch, Visa Fast Track partners and several Kenyan banks.
Named to Business Daily’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2019, Ogallo also won the Visa Everywhere Initiative (2018) and MEST Africa Challenge (2019). In April 2021 he sold WayaWaya to Nairobi customer-experience company Ajua and became its Vice-President for Product APIs and Integrations. He later led Ajua’s WhatsApp Business suite, now serving 50,000 SMEs in nine markets and cutting response times by 70 percent.
Ogallo mentors founders via iHub and the Kenya Bankers fintech sandbox and speaks worldwide on chat payments and inclusive finance. His technology is now integrated into AjuaPay, enabling one-click checkout for e-commerce across Kenya and Ghana. In 2025 he launched WayaLabs, an R&D studio building generative-AI assistants for cross-border remittances, underscoring his drive to open modern financial services to Africa’s next billion users.